Nouvelle cuisine
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“I love Nouvelle surprize..... err cuisine!”
~ WordGirl on Nouvelle cuisine
It is a recognised fact that when a restaurant becomes too popular, the chef is worked-off his or her feet trying to keep all those tables supplied with appetising, nutritious food. Increasing the prices may offer a temporary relief from the over-popularity of the eating-place, or it may instead create an atmosphere of quality and exclusiveness, thereby increasing custom further still. What is in fact needed is a way to reduce the number of customers to manageable proportions, but without resorting to such unpopular or illegal measures as salmonella or e-coli. A switch from food to Nouvelle Cuisine provides the ideal answer in such circumstances.
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[edit] Principles
No one single characteristic describes Nouvelle Cuisine. Rather, a combination of known attributes, when seen together, determine the style to exist.
- Oversize plate: Nouvelle Cuisine dishes are invariably served on a plate at least three times the diameter required to hold the meal itself. Sometimes, the plate is so large that places must be double-spaced. The very large size of plate allows adequate free space, unencumbered with food, for the chef to demonstrate his or her artistic talent. It is also important that the plate is cold, preferably having been deep-frozen until a few minutes before serving. This coldness ensures that the customer has to eat-up quickly, thus freeing the table sooner.
- Dusty eating-surfaces: The plate, and any other surfaces carrying food shall be sufficiently dusty to create the impression of a possible hygiene concern. If plates do not remain unused long enough for natural dust to build-up, then this may be substituted with flour, or in fact with any powdery material typically found in a kitchen.
- Artwork: All plates shall display 'modern' artwork. This is best achieved by way of suspending a ketchup bottle, nozzle-down, over a food-preparation table. The table having been loaded with plates, the ketchup-bottle is uncorked and set swinging in random arcs. Additional colors may be provided by way of multiple suspended bottles, for example tabasco, HP sauce, vindaloo, gravy, mustard.. the possibilities for creativity are endless. This preparation of the plates is not something to be hurried; if a burning smell or smoke comes from the oven whilst the all-important plate artwork is in progress, just ignore it.
- Microscopic portions: A prime requirement is that sufficient exposed area be left on the plate for the chef to demonstrate his or her artistic talent. Thus, food portions must be kept relatively small in volume. The large size of the plate helps in making the portion look even more measly and stingy than it actually is, fostering the impresssion that this restaurant is very poor value for money. It is in any case the prime objective of Nouvelle Cuisine to ensure that every diner goes home and makes a sandwich immediately afterwards. The customer must be provided with only the very tiniest amount of sustenance, and at astronomic cost.
- Stacked ingredients: As opposed to the conventional lateral arrangement of food items, all of the items making-up the meal are piled on-top of each other, in a Jenga-esque teetering stack. This has a number of benefits, not least of which is that it makes the portion look even smaller still. It also allows the chef to hide items which didn't turn out too well underneath those that look OK.
- Freshness: All Nouvelle Cusine dishes shall be kept as 'fresh' as possible. This dictates that no food-item shall be subjected to temperatures in excess of 40C for a time exceeding 20 seconds during its preparation. In the event this makes cutting of the food more difficult than usual, it is customary to provide an angle-grinder in addition to the standard cutlery.
- Side dishes are OUT: In traditional cusine it is standard practice to provide a selection of vegetables or fries along with the main item. With Nouvelle Cusine, side-dishes simply cannot be allowed as the customer might, in transferring these to the plate, destroy the symmetry and balance of the chef's artwork. Instead, diners will need to get used-to consuming a portion of meat or fish on its own. As a palliative, some chefs may place two very small fries or vegetable items symmetrically either side of the meat.
- Sweets: Here the Nouvelle Cuisine Artist gets to have a field-day. Dishes whose name sounds mouthwateringly indulgent, for example double-cream chocolate cake, in fact transpire to be a passable imitation of a spaceman's lunch-pill in a tiny pill-box, on the obligatory massive plate, with 0.01cc of cream spread uniformly and thinly across the plate's surface, making it totally impossible to collect it or apply it to the food. Oh, and of course with the obligatory ketchup-art taken to new heights of expressionism.
[edit] Advanced Techniques
The more-seasoned Nouvelle Cuisine chef will want to acquire skills such as that of throwing food at plates from a distance of several feet, to create an even more artistic result.
[edit] Effectiveness
Highly effective. Restaurants which have switched to Nouvelle Cuisine no longer suffer from overcrowding or excess patronage.
